Sandbags are routinely used as a flood defence barrier or a blast suppression barrier. It will be well understood that sand bags can be built to form a wall or a dyke.
Thus, a typical way of building a flood barrier is to pile filled sandbags together to act as a barrage or darn, for example across a doorway, to prevent the ingress of water.
Similarly, a typical method used to suppress fragmentation, is to surround the ordnance with a wall of sandbags. This allows the ordnance to be detonated with little risk of the fragmentation damaging equipment or injuring personnel. The amount of sandbags required to build the protective wall are generally dependent on the type of ordnance to be disposed of. For example, detonation of an 81 mm HE mortar round typically requires a wall built from approximately 80 regulation size sandbags.
However, the disadvantages of using sandbags as a barrier, either a flood defence barrier or a blast suppression barrier, are numerous.
Firstly, a supply of particulate matter, such as sand or earth, must be located to fill the bags. Typically, the only source available is the surrounding ground or alternatively loose sand must be transported in. In the case of sand, if the sand is wet, it will significantly increase in weight and can therefore be very labour intensive and time consuming to fill bag and create a suitable defence wall. Alternatively, if bags are to be filled with earth or soil and the ground happens to be particularly dry and compact, attaining the filling for the bags can be extremely time and labour intensive. In either case, this is especially disadvantageous.
In addition, when used as a blast suppression wall, ordnance detonation teams tend to be quite small in numbers, making manpower a relatively scarce resource. Furthermore, bulky and heavy tools such as shovels must be transported to the site in order to fill the bags.
Alternatively, the sandbags may be pre-filled off-site and delivered to the location, However, not only does this place additional demands on transport resources, generally man-power is still required to fill the bags, and load and unload the vehicle.
Additionally, if pre-filled sandbags are stored in unfavourable conditions for an extended period of time, they are prone to perishing, rendering them useless and a waste of resources.
Also, as a blast suppressing means, sandbags can also bean inefficient, as the bag itself can be easily destroyed during detonation. Without a containing bag, the particulate matter contained within can do little to retard the impact of the fragments. Hence, an extensive quantity of sandbags may be required during detonation, depending on the blast fragmentation capacity of the explosive ordnance.
A further disadvantage of using sandbags is that they have limited ability to prevent the sound of detonation to the surrounding area. This can be problematic as many military ranges are located nearby residential housing where sound restrictions apply. Hence, loud detonation of ordnance may result in breaking of such restrictions.
During conflicts or war, it is common for defensive munitions to be laid in place in order to secure an area for tactical purposes, for example anti-personnel mines and cluster bombs. Unfortunately, many of these device's are not detonated during the conflict and remain in place long after the conflict has passed. This can cause serious risks for civilians; who return to the area, as they may unknowingly activate the munitions and do serious harm to themselves or others in the vicinity.
Furthermore, in military operations it is common for a small proportion of explosive ordnance devices to fail to detonate upon firing. In some instances, the unexploded ordnance is easy to locate. In other instances, the ordnance is difficult to locate and may lie undetected for an indeterminate period of time. In either case, once found, it is necessary to destroy the ordnance to ensure it does not detonate unexpectedly, potentially causing damage to equipment or injuring personnel.
Known devices for detonating unexploded ordnance and other munitions include electric detonators, plastic explosives and sub-munitions. Depending on the type of ordnance being destroyed and the type of detonator used, a range of blast fragment zones may result. In the circumstances where personnel or equipment may lie within the blast fragmentation zone, the range of impact of the fragmentations must be suppressed to avoid damage or injuries.
There have been numerous attempts to overcome the aforementioned problems, in particular with respect to flood barriers. However, a particular problem exists in the case of a flood defence barrier, since time may be of the essence to prevent the ingress of water and to prevent damage to property, etc.
One such flood defence system utilises a bag or sack containing a superabsorbent polymer. Such a system does provide advantages over the use of conventional sandbags, for example, they are easy to transport, are lightweight to carry and can be stored easily. However, such systems do suffer from a number of disadvantages in that the superabsorbent polymer will generally be loosely filled, enabling expansion of the polymer once it is wetted. Thus the polymer and/or the wetted gel may lie at one end of the sack and when the barrage units are stacked together a watertight seal may not be formed.
Furthermore, whilst superabsorbent polymers do possess a high capacity for water uptake, the rate of uptake is slow. This may be a significant disadvantage when building a flood defence barrier since the ingress of large amounts of water may have taken place before the superabsorbent polymer has swelled to a sufficient extent to form a barrier. For example, tests have shown that a sack filled with superabsorbent polymer alone may take ten minutes or more to absorb sufficient water to enable the bag or sack to act as a flood defence barrier.
The present invention has been made, at least in part, in consideration of the problems and drawbacks of conventional systems and attempts to overcome or mitigate the disadvantages present with conventionally known approaches.